July 28, 2021 • 11 mins
Space hurricanes are officially a thing. What does that mean for us here on Earth? Probably not much.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and there's the special but normal producer Dave here.
I just mean special, like in a way that like
sure by special in all the right ways. That's right,
in a romping room sort of way. That's exactly right.
And I'll tell you something else that special, Chuck, Something
very special happened on August twenty, two thousand fourteen, over
(00:27):
the magnetic north pole of this yere planet Earth. For
the first time in the history of humanity, we documented
what's known as a space plasma hurricane in that neat.
It's neat and uh, this is something that wasn't fully
Um well it was documented here and there, but Nature
(00:50):
Communications wrote about it in February of this year, so
I think it got a lot more attention, um, seven
years after the fact, almost seven years. But yeah, this was,
like you said about the north Pole, it happened over
a few hours. Um. The results of what happened up
there was there were some satellites that were disrupted. Um,
(01:13):
the geo magnetic field got a little kinky for a
little while. But back here on Earth, uh, well below
the eyeonosphere, we we were just like, I don't know
what I was doing in August. I could probably go
back and look unmarkable, though I wasn't thinking about space hurricanes, no,
because no one really noticed, because in August that's a
(01:33):
pretty terrible time typically to see the Auroras um or
at least the Aurora borealis, because the day the days
are so much longer than the nights, so you can't
really see these these fantastic light displays. But had you
been able to see the Aurora borealis that night, you
would have been knocked right out of your your hiking boots.
(01:55):
Basically because this was again, a space hurricane. It doesn't
happen every day, and we don't really understand fully how
they happen or why. But they're called space hurricanes because
from what we saw, from what this Nature Communications paper
from February said, um, it bears a striking resemblance to
(02:15):
a tropical hurricane or a cyclone or an Atlantic hurricane,
where there's a mass of energy basically spinning around uh
calm center. There's a million differences between I say, earthbound
hurricane and a space hurricane, but the fact that they're
(02:36):
there you could even call both hurricanes is kind of startling,
And actually it seems to me, Chuck, kind of like
it's presenting like a new pioneer in scientific research. Now,
like we're like, Okay, how does this happen? Where did
these come from? What is going on here? I agree,
And I also have to admit I was distracted for
(02:56):
a minute because I was obsessed with trying to figure
out what I was doing on August? Did you ever
figure it out? No, because I didn't open up my
calendar and go back. But I did find out that
it was a Wednesday, so I know we probably weren't
recording this, and it was a year after our TV
show aired, which aired over the course of what like
(03:17):
ten days. Yeah, you're probably in hiding still may have been, Yeah,
but I think that's probably a good place. We can't
break yet, can we? Sure we can? It's a short
stuff ever, anything goes all right, let's take a break.
Then I'll get my head back in the game. Okay, Chuck,
(03:56):
you took a salt tablet, you walked it off, and
now your head's back in the game. Right, My head's
back in the game. Where did you leave off? I
left off about how space hurricanes are basically presenting a
new pioneer frontier in in space research because we didn't
really know they existed. We suspected something like that existed,
(04:18):
but we certainly had no idea that there were arms
of plasma that that spun around at staggering speeds a
calm center. But but it's not wind we're talking about.
These aren't clouds. This is a water vapor like this
is plasma. These are ions and electrons and and just
incredible energy and magnetism. Has nothing to do with the
(04:40):
earthbound hurricane, and yet it bears a striking resemblance to it.
It's very bizarre. Yeah, it is interesting, and that there
is uh, what you can think of as precipitation in
both and that we get the rain on Earth and
there's this electric precipitation, and it's super interesting that there
is an eye and that they spin and have arms,
(05:01):
which you know, uh, obviously it's why they're called hurricanes.
I know. There was one meteorologists in here who in
the House Stuff Works article that said he thought they
might have been called space vortex is initially because it
was over the North Pole and resembled the polar vortex,
but they went with the space hurricane, I guess because
it's a little sexier probably. Um. One of the other
(05:23):
ways that they're different is the sheers well from where
they occur obviously the Earth's atmosphere UM from I think
ground zero, or we should probably just say the ground
the surface, the from the ground to about five to
nine miles up is where you're gonna find an Earth hurricane, yeah,
(05:45):
whereas the space hurricane is in the eyeonmosphere, like I
mentioned early on. And then the sheer size. Uh, this
one I think was about six hundred miles wide, right,
and which is huge it is that's gets a good size.
It's about double the size of like a giant Atlantic hurricane.
And it's spun really fast miles per hour about d
(06:09):
and sixty kilometers per hour um, just whipping around. And
again there's a calm center where this activity is not happening,
where this rotation is taking place, or is the center
where for the rotation. And we have a fairly good
handle on hurricanes. Are our explanation in our hurricanes episode.
(06:31):
Notwithstanding science generally understands how hurricanes here on Earth work
space hurricanes. Again, this is new. There was there was
one I read an article about a guy who said, yeah,
we're pretty sure one of these happened like fifty years ago,
but we didn't have anything like the instrumentation today, so
we couldn't document it. This is the first one we've
actually documented, so this is like brand new to us.
(06:54):
But rather than wind and water, vapor and clouds, the
space hurricane is made of plasma. And plasma, as we've
talked about many times, chuck is the fourth state of
matter where it's like solid and then you make it
a little more energetic and it becomes liquid, a little
more energetic, becomes gas. Well, even more energetic than that
is plasma, where there's it's such high temperature, and of
(07:16):
course temperature is just another measure. Are you thinking about
where you were in August fourteen again, No, I'm thinking
about how plasma is the umami of states of matter. Okay,
good enough, as long as you're thinking about plasma right now.
But it's so energetic and it's so high temperature, which
is a measure of energy that like the electrons and
(07:37):
the positively charged nuclei just get ripped apart and spread
apart so that they don't interact. So you just got
this um electrified magnetized incredibly hot energetic gas, and that
instead of clouds of water vapor what make up the
arms of the space hurricane. Right, And as far as
(07:59):
the conditions of when this happened in if you remember
from our not the sun episode, but uh, what was
it on solar winds? We do it on space weather?
Is at it probably when we talked about the eleven
year cycle of the sun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that
we probably talked about it in both of them, but yes,
(08:21):
space space weather. I think it was better in space weather.
Uh So at the time when this happened, still don't
know what I was doing that day, but on that Wednesday,
the Sun was at its maximum of that eleven year
cycle that we talked about, uh, and was also at
a time of what the ACU weather people called low
solar and otherwise low geomagnetic activity. So the people that
(08:44):
they interviewed from ACU weather said that it did resemble
an Earth hurricane and that there was, uh there's usually
like quiet, like the calm before the storm, the quiet conditions,
and it was the same in space although now I
think we're having uh we're not sure if it was
the maximum of the eleven year cycle set against low
(09:04):
geomagnetic activity, or if it was the minimum and this
is a misprint. Oh, I see, I see, so I see. Um.
So what I understand is that that, yeah, can whatever
it was. The upshot is that space weather was calm,
like whatever normal space whether we get from the Sun,
it was generally calm, which is weird because you think
(09:25):
that it would be that solar wind from the Sun
that would cause this kind of thing. But they're like, no,
we we actually have no idea where this thing came from.
And the fact that it isn't related to the solar cycle,
that eleven year cycle makes them think that it's probably
a little more common than we realized, and now that
we know what to look for, we're gonna start noticing them.
(09:47):
So they think maybe it has to do with change
in the magnetic field lines, where one was like ripped
apart and then connected with the neighbor, releasing a tremendous
amount of magnetic energy. That's one of the explain nations
I've seen. There's a few others too. Yeah, and you
know the um to borrow your phrase, The upshot is
is that it's really not going to matter much to
(10:08):
us on Earth. I guess if we had any kind
of um space exploration going on during one of these,
that probably wouldn't be great if you were up there,
just a guess. But they kind of come back with
a line that you always hear when it's something that
could disrupt satellites is here on Earth, it might mess
with your GPS. I feel like that's always what you hear. Yeah,
(10:31):
pretty much. Yeah, whenever there's satellite interference, it can be problematic.
I mean that was a big part of the um
Space Weather episode two. But yeah, and why two k am?
I right, yeah, man, we need to do an episode
just on that. I can't wait to do that. Really, Yeah,
we're going to Okay, the nineties are back, are they?
From what I understand? You know, a new seventies sort
(10:53):
of disco tech bar is opening in Atlanta this weekend.
So oh sweet. When things are feeling really good, I
think you and me and Emily and you should all
go get our studio fifty four on. I would love that.
I'm gonna go get some replacement goldfish from my platform
shoes great because those other ones have been dead for years.
They're getting a little gamy. I have to you got
(11:15):
anything else about space hurricanes, nothing else. Look out for him.
It's the new thing. Yeah, just this is going to
get a follow up when we understand them a little more,
because they are amazing. So until then, this was your
introduction to space hurricanes. I hope you enjoyed it, Chuck,
hope you enjoyed it. They hope you enjoyed it. And
in space stuff, short stuff is out. Stuff you Should
(11:39):
Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and there's the special but normal producer Dave here.
I just mean special, like in a way that like
sure by special in all the right ways. That's right,
in a romping room sort of way. That's exactly right.
And I'll tell you something else that special, Chuck, Something
very special happened on August twenty, two thousand fourteen, over
(00:27):
the magnetic north pole of this yere planet Earth. For
the first time in the history of humanity, we documented
what's known as a space plasma hurricane in that neat.
It's neat and uh, this is something that wasn't fully
Um well it was documented here and there, but Nature
(00:50):
Communications wrote about it in February of this year, so
I think it got a lot more attention, um, seven
years after the fact, almost seven years. But yeah, this was,
like you said about the north Pole, it happened over
a few hours. Um. The results of what happened up
there was there were some satellites that were disrupted. Um,
(01:13):
the geo magnetic field got a little kinky for a
little while. But back here on Earth, uh, well below
the eyeonosphere, we we were just like, I don't know
what I was doing in August. I could probably go
back and look unmarkable, though I wasn't thinking about space hurricanes, no,
because no one really noticed, because in August that's a
(01:33):
pretty terrible time typically to see the Auroras um or
at least the Aurora borealis, because the day the days
are so much longer than the nights, so you can't
really see these these fantastic light displays. But had you
been able to see the Aurora borealis that night, you
would have been knocked right out of your your hiking boots.
(01:55):
Basically because this was again, a space hurricane. It doesn't
happen every day, and we don't really understand fully how
they happen or why. But they're called space hurricanes because
from what we saw, from what this Nature Communications paper
from February said, um, it bears a striking resemblance to
(02:15):
a tropical hurricane or a cyclone or an Atlantic hurricane,
where there's a mass of energy basically spinning around uh
calm center. There's a million differences between I say, earthbound
hurricane and a space hurricane, but the fact that they're
(02:36):
there you could even call both hurricanes is kind of startling,
And actually it seems to me, Chuck, kind of like
it's presenting like a new pioneer in scientific research. Now,
like we're like, Okay, how does this happen? Where did
these come from? What is going on here? I agree,
And I also have to admit I was distracted for
(02:56):
a minute because I was obsessed with trying to figure
out what I was doing on August? Did you ever
figure it out? No, because I didn't open up my
calendar and go back. But I did find out that
it was a Wednesday, so I know we probably weren't
recording this, and it was a year after our TV
show aired, which aired over the course of what like
(03:17):
ten days. Yeah, you're probably in hiding still may have been, Yeah,
but I think that's probably a good place. We can't
break yet, can we? Sure we can? It's a short
stuff ever, anything goes all right, let's take a break.
Then I'll get my head back in the game. Okay, Chuck,
(03:56):
you took a salt tablet, you walked it off, and
now your head's back in the game. Right, My head's
back in the game. Where did you leave off? I
left off about how space hurricanes are basically presenting a
new pioneer frontier in in space research because we didn't
really know they existed. We suspected something like that existed,
(04:18):
but we certainly had no idea that there were arms
of plasma that that spun around at staggering speeds a
calm center. But but it's not wind we're talking about.
These aren't clouds. This is a water vapor like this
is plasma. These are ions and electrons and and just
incredible energy and magnetism. Has nothing to do with the
(04:40):
earthbound hurricane, and yet it bears a striking resemblance to it.
It's very bizarre. Yeah, it is interesting, and that there
is uh, what you can think of as precipitation in
both and that we get the rain on Earth and
there's this electric precipitation, and it's super interesting that there
is an eye and that they spin and have arms,
(05:01):
which you know, uh, obviously it's why they're called hurricanes.
I know. There was one meteorologists in here who in
the House Stuff Works article that said he thought they
might have been called space vortex is initially because it
was over the North Pole and resembled the polar vortex,
but they went with the space hurricane, I guess because
it's a little sexier probably. Um. One of the other
(05:23):
ways that they're different is the sheers well from where
they occur obviously the Earth's atmosphere UM from I think
ground zero, or we should probably just say the ground
the surface, the from the ground to about five to
nine miles up is where you're gonna find an Earth hurricane, yeah,
(05:45):
whereas the space hurricane is in the eyeonmosphere, like I
mentioned early on. And then the sheer size. Uh, this
one I think was about six hundred miles wide, right,
and which is huge it is that's gets a good size.
It's about double the size of like a giant Atlantic hurricane.
And it's spun really fast miles per hour about d
(06:09):
and sixty kilometers per hour um, just whipping around. And
again there's a calm center where this activity is not happening,
where this rotation is taking place, or is the center
where for the rotation. And we have a fairly good
handle on hurricanes. Are our explanation in our hurricanes episode.
(06:31):
Notwithstanding science generally understands how hurricanes here on Earth work
space hurricanes. Again, this is new. There was there was
one I read an article about a guy who said, yeah,
we're pretty sure one of these happened like fifty years ago,
but we didn't have anything like the instrumentation today, so
we couldn't document it. This is the first one we've
actually documented, so this is like brand new to us.
(06:54):
But rather than wind and water, vapor and clouds, the
space hurricane is made of plasma. And plasma, as we've
talked about many times, chuck is the fourth state of
matter where it's like solid and then you make it
a little more energetic and it becomes liquid, a little
more energetic, becomes gas. Well, even more energetic than that
is plasma, where there's it's such high temperature, and of
(07:16):
course temperature is just another measure. Are you thinking about
where you were in August fourteen again, No, I'm thinking
about how plasma is the umami of states of matter. Okay,
good enough, as long as you're thinking about plasma right now.
But it's so energetic and it's so high temperature, which
is a measure of energy that like the electrons and
(07:37):
the positively charged nuclei just get ripped apart and spread
apart so that they don't interact. So you just got
this um electrified magnetized incredibly hot energetic gas, and that
instead of clouds of water vapor what make up the
arms of the space hurricane. Right, And as far as
(07:59):
the conditions of when this happened in if you remember
from our not the sun episode, but uh, what was
it on solar winds? We do it on space weather?
Is at it probably when we talked about the eleven
year cycle of the sun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that
we probably talked about it in both of them, but yes,
(08:21):
space space weather. I think it was better in space weather.
Uh So at the time when this happened, still don't
know what I was doing that day, but on that Wednesday,
the Sun was at its maximum of that eleven year
cycle that we talked about, uh, and was also at
a time of what the ACU weather people called low
solar and otherwise low geomagnetic activity. So the people that
(08:44):
they interviewed from ACU weather said that it did resemble
an Earth hurricane and that there was, uh there's usually
like quiet, like the calm before the storm, the quiet conditions,
and it was the same in space although now I
think we're having uh we're not sure if it was
the maximum of the eleven year cycle set against low
(09:04):
geomagnetic activity, or if it was the minimum and this
is a misprint. Oh, I see, I see, so I see. Um.
So what I understand is that that, yeah, can whatever
it was. The upshot is that space weather was calm,
like whatever normal space whether we get from the Sun,
it was generally calm, which is weird because you think
(09:25):
that it would be that solar wind from the Sun
that would cause this kind of thing. But they're like, no,
we we actually have no idea where this thing came from.
And the fact that it isn't related to the solar cycle,
that eleven year cycle makes them think that it's probably
a little more common than we realized, and now that
we know what to look for, we're gonna start noticing them.
(09:47):
So they think maybe it has to do with change
in the magnetic field lines, where one was like ripped
apart and then connected with the neighbor, releasing a tremendous
amount of magnetic energy. That's one of the explain nations
I've seen. There's a few others too. Yeah, and you
know the um to borrow your phrase, The upshot is
is that it's really not going to matter much to
(10:08):
us on Earth. I guess if we had any kind
of um space exploration going on during one of these,
that probably wouldn't be great if you were up there,
just a guess. But they kind of come back with
a line that you always hear when it's something that
could disrupt satellites is here on Earth, it might mess
with your GPS. I feel like that's always what you hear. Yeah,
(10:31):
pretty much. Yeah, whenever there's satellite interference, it can be problematic.
I mean that was a big part of the um
Space Weather episode two. But yeah, and why two k am?
I right, yeah, man, we need to do an episode
just on that. I can't wait to do that. Really, Yeah,
we're going to Okay, the nineties are back, are they?
From what I understand? You know, a new seventies sort
(10:53):
of disco tech bar is opening in Atlanta this weekend.
So oh sweet. When things are feeling really good, I
think you and me and Emily and you should all
go get our studio fifty four on. I would love that.
I'm gonna go get some replacement goldfish from my platform
shoes great because those other ones have been dead for years.
They're getting a little gamy. I have to you got
(11:15):
anything else about space hurricanes, nothing else. Look out for him.
It's the new thing. Yeah, just this is going to
get a follow up when we understand them a little more,
because they are amazing. So until then, this was your
introduction to space hurricanes. I hope you enjoyed it, Chuck,
hope you enjoyed it. They hope you enjoyed it. And
in space stuff, short stuff is out. Stuff you Should
(11:39):
Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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